README.md

Induction

A Polyglot Database Client for Mac OS X

Explore, Query, Visualize

Focus on the data, not the database. Induction is a new kind of tool designed for understanding and communicating relationships in data. Explore rows and columns, query to get exactly what you want, and visualize that data in powerful ways.

SQL? NoSQL? It Don't Matter

Data is just data, after all. Induction supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, Redis, and MongoDB out-of-the-box, and has an extensible architecture that makes it easy to write adapters for anything else you can think of.

Free As In "Free to Kick Ass"

The full source code for Induction is available on GitHub. I'm excited to build something insanely great, and I invite you to join me on this codeventure. Bug reports, feature requests, patches, well-wishes, and rap demo tapes are always welcome.

What's In A Name?

Induction (In"dʌk'ʃən)

The generation of an electric current by a varying magnetic field

The derivation of general principles from specific instances

Data is like electricity: It appears in endless variety, employing adapters and transformers to become more useful. But no matter what, data is power. From data, we derive knowledge and understanding through a process of induction.

Roadmap

Induction is already quite useful, but there's a long way to go before it's ready for a public release--let alone a beta. After a brief hiatus, it's now steadily being developed, so you should be able to

To get a better idea of what's planned, here's a list of features expected to ship before an official release (tentative / less likely features indicated by †):

How Can I Help?

If you're interested in working on a particular feature, open an Issue (or join an existing one if it exists).

Communicate your intent, collect feedback, and submit pull requests. Just the minimal bureaucratic process to reduce the duplication of efforts--that's all I'm looking for. As best I can, I'll try to do the same myself.

If you're interested in contributing to the design of the application, contact me directly, and we'll work something out. Design is an entirely different beast that doesn't quite lend itself to the same process of open source collaboration.

Adapters

Adapters are being maintained and managed as a separate repository. If you wish to work on a new or existing adapter, you can do so in that project.

Requirements

Induction requires Xcode 4.2 or above, and targets Mac OS 10.7.

Some adapters, such as for MySQL and MongoDB, require libraries not included in OS X by default. These can be installed separately using Homebrew or another package manager, or by compiling from source.

Getting Started

Induction uses CocoaPods to manage dependencies, so be sure to have that installed before attempting to build the project.